Minutes of the
SAON Board Meeting
Potsdam, Germany, 1-2 October 2012
1. Welcome and Introductions
The SAON Chair, Tom Armstrong (AMAP), opened the meeting of the SAON Board at 9:00 hrs on Monday, 1st October 2012. The participants introduced themselves. The meeting adopted the agenda as proposed. The agenda is attached as Appendix 1 and the list of participants as Appendix 2.
In his welcome statement to the participants, Tom Armstrong described how the main purpose of the meeting would be to further develop the strategy of SAON. He explained the need for the formulation of an overarching strategy that would support the implementation of SAON.
2. Actions from last Board Meeting
The SAON Secretary, Jan René Larsen (AMAP) went through the List of Action from the Board meeting in Tromsø, noting that all actions had been completed. The Chairmanship and the Secretariat had been given the action to “Develop a document on the criteria and process for the approval of new tasks”. The Secretariat had prepared a proposal (doc. #30), but it was agreed to postpone the discussion of this.
3. SAON activities and status for the Tasks: Coordination across networks and platforms for research and monitoring and 4. SAON activities and status for the Tasks: Access to data
Invitations to the meeting had been sent to the regular members of the Board as well as to Task Leads. In his invitation letter, Tom Armstrong had invited both groups to prepare presentations for the meeting:
“I draw your attention to agenda item 4 (‘Coordination across networks and platforms for research and monitoring’) and agenda item 5 (‘Access to data’). For each of these items, I kindly ask you to prepare a 3 min presentation that will address how you think that SAON should develop within these areas from the perspective of your country/Task/organization.”
Following this, a series of presentations/background documents had been sent to the SAON Secretariat prior to the meeting, and had been made available to the participants at the SAON web site (http://www.arcticobserving.org/board/board-meetings). In addition, a series of documents were made available during and after the meeting. A full list of meeting documents is found in Appendix 3.
Countries, Tasks, and organizations addressed these questions in their presentations to the meeting as follows:
Countries:
· Canada (Helen Joseph, doc. #44)
· Denmark (Jan René Larsen)
· Finland (Jouni Pulliainen)
· Germany (Hugues Lantuit)
· Iceland (Halldór Jóhannsson)
· Italy (Vito Vitale, doc. #6, #7)
· Japan (Tetsuo Ohata, doc. #40)
· Norway (Ola Glesne)
· Poland (Waldemar Walczowski, doc. #10, 42)
· Russia (Igor Ashik, doc. #45, #46)
· Sweden (Magnus Tannerfeldt)
· USA (Erica L. Key, Martin Jeffries, doc. #2, #37)
Tasks:
· Polar Profile (Task 2, John Hugh, doc. #33, #62)
· Establishing an Arctic network on environmental monitoring of hazardous substances (Task 6, Ola Glesne, doc. #38)
· An International Review of Community-Based Monitoring in the Context of Sustaining Arctic ObservingNetworks Process (Task 9, Eva Kruemmel, Noor Johnson, doc. #8)
· An Arctic Data Coordination Network (Task N2, Mark Parsons, doc #1, #20)
· Classification Task (Task 10, Victoria Gofman, doc #25)
Organizations:
· WMO (Miroslav Ondras, doc. #18, #43, #48, #53)
· GEO/GEOSS (Yubao Qiu, doc. #49, #58)
Following the presentations, the floor was opened for a broader discussion on how a SAON strategy should be developed and implemented. Tom Armstrong and David Hik (IASC, SAON vice-Chair) had developed two strategy documents that were presented to the meeting (doc. #50, #51). They reminded the meeting of the overall goals of SAON, namely to provide observational information in a timely manner, and that information should be policy relevant and policy prescriptive. They asked the meeting to study the documents and to formulate relevant actions.
On an organization level, Magnus Tannerfeldt proposed that SAON should take an overall role as an organization that would be setting standards and giving recommendations. For example, the need for a definition of community-based monitoring was discussed. Erica L. Key believed that SAON should be developed into something that could be an integrated part of an investigator’s life like Arctic Council (AC) and IASC. She suggested that a governance map should be developed that clearly defined the role of SAON. Marin Jeffries believed that SAON should seek to develop a closer relationship with the industry. Lars-Otto Reiersen (AMAP) responded that this had been tried with the oil, mining and offshore industry, and usually required negotiations on the mutual release of data.
On the question of standardization, Erica L. Key asked if standardization of measurements should be developed to cover ‘everything’, and asked if this is something that SAON should foster? She added that she did not want to prescribe instruments, but standardization should apply to data protocols. Thorkild Meedom (Denmark) added that he did not want to see standardization of the way data are collected. Simon Wilson (AMAP) saw no point in SAON to be prescriptive. Moreover, he could not see SAON as providing data, but saw a role of SAON in facilitating access to data. Martin Jeffries believed that the discussion about SAON’s role should focus on the integrity of data usage. Even if SAON should not work to make data available, SAON could still do coordination and facilitation, and could still have a data policy. This led to a broader discussion on data policy, and David Hik noted that IASC has created a new data policy group, and that this question could be taken care of by this group.
Mark Parsons wanted an overall discussion about what SAON really is. This would be important to know otherwise he believed that the researcher in the field would feel disconnected. The other question to understand would be ‘Who is SAON?’ He believed that the coordination of data is coordination of people. Hugues Lantuit added to this by making reference to his involvement in the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTNP): In this Task they had wanted to understand what was required in order to get the ‘SAON medal/badge’. Peter Schlosser (Task 12, Arctic Observing Summit) added to the question ‘Who is SAON?’ that the scientific community should have the feeling that they own the program, since this is where the data stream is generated.
Tom Armstrong summarized the discussion and proposed that three break-out groups should be formed:
1) Coordination, governance, and sustainment
2) Data management
3) Community Based Monitoring
The three break-out groups met, and the reports of the groups are found in Appendix 6, 7, and 8, and are summarized below:
Coordination, governance, and sustainment (presented by Martin Jeffries):
On the SAON history, there has always been tensions between being all-inclusive and then expand later. We can probably not go back but have to deal with what we have. The components are very wide: Permafrost, human health, Artic Ocean circulation. Arctic observing is important.
SAON should be careful what we think we are coordinating. We do not want to coordinate what is already being coordinated. A point is that if our goal is to provide information and advice to policymakers, then we need to find out what they want.
Concluding: SAON must be productive. There should be a rolling list of actions and activities on a list which is subject to updates and reviews. From the point of view of sustaining, we need to have something to show. Many people can see themselves in SAON in a working group, and this could be the right way to get people engaged in SAON. The work could focus on standards, protocols, and interoperability, and can cover people from other latitudes, structures, and connections. In doing this it is important to look for what is existing so that SAON is not reinventing the wheel.
Data Management (presented by Mark Parsons)
The core question that had been discussed was: ‘What is a network’, and ‘How do we approve networks’. It was agreed that there should be a low barrier to entry for a network, perhaps two levels. The basic level requirements should be: a list of data, and a way to get to the data, point of indication, indication about how it will be sustained, how would you like to move forwards. The mechanism of approval should be defined – this could be the task for a working group. There should be a mechanism for review, assessment, and support, and also for demotion. There had been a discussion on recognized data centers, and one option would be to look at ICSU/WDS.
Community Based Monitoring (CBM, presented by Noor Johnson):
The CBM break-out group addressed how to best support the development of CBM as an observing network within the context of SAON. There is an immediate need to better define CBM and to document best practices of current projects, including methods, data format and deliverables, and how to best involve traditional knowledge holders in monitoring. In addition, the group identified several other areas that are critical to advancing CBM, including:
- The need to better articulate benefits of CBM to different stakeholders, including communities, decision-makers, and scientists;
- Developing and strengthening connections to other projects both inside and outside SAON that are relevant to CBM (such as the UNESCO “knowledge co-production” initiative, the Eye on Earth community, the Arctic Observing Summit, and ELOKA meetings.
- Improving integration with the Arctic observing community as a whole, with the larger goal being to fill in gaps and improve the state of the Arctic reporting.
The current tasks on CBM (task 9 and 10) will contribute to these needs but cannot in themselves address all of them; there is therefore a need for SAON to continue to focus on the development of CBM as a network. There is also a need to integrate CBM within other SAON sub-goals and tasks, such as observation coordination and sustaining and managing data.
5. New Tasks. Reporting from other Tasks
Task reports were presented for these Tasks:
· Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTNP) (Task 1, Inga May, doc. #26)
· Circumpolar Health Observatory (Task 3, Helen Joseph)
· The Canadian IPY Data Assembly Centre Network (Task 5, Scott Tomlinson, Helen Joseph, doc. #11)
· Coordination of existing Arctic relevant Meta-databases and Project Directories (Task 8, Jan René Larsen, doc. #60)
· PEOPLE – ACE (Task 11, Marty Kress, Steve Spehn, doc. #5)
· Arctic Observing Summit (Task 12, Peter Schlosser, doc. #47)
· IASOA (Task N1, Sandy Starkweather, doc. #21)
· Contribution to SAON through RRR (Task #N3, Miroslav Ondras, WMO, doc. #19)
· Arctic IONET (Task N5, Nicolaj Bock, EEA, doc. #56)
Some of the Tasks had not been able to send a representative to the meeting, but had supplied a written report and/or been in contact with the Secretariat:
· CBMP (Task 13, doc. #12, #36)
· Arctic Ocean Structure (Task 14, doc. #23)
· Expand Historical Climate Analysis to the Pacific Sector of the Arctic (Task 15, doc. #27)
In its review, the Board noted that all Tasks are in a good shape, with good progress, and mostly are well funded. The Board prepared an overview of the Tasks and their status, which can be found in Appendix 5.
For some of the Tasks, the Board had more detailed discussions:
· Role of remote sensing (Task 4): The intention of the Task had been to work with a space agency, but the CSA had had reluctance to lead this. It was considered to put the task on hold. Lars-Otto Reiersen noted that AMAP is missing a lot of sensors and that this area should be given priority. He noted that the AMAP Secretariat has been approached by Canada and Italy on this. Vito Vitale noted that the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) has a work package on this topic. It was agreed that the Task was important and should seek new leadership.
· Arctic Observing Summit (AOS, Task 12): The Task is led by ISAC, and there was a discussion about the relationship with SAON, on the mandate and on the involvement of the Board in the preparation of the Summit. The preparations involve the production of white papers in a two-fold process: There are designated authors, but there is also an open process. 2-300 participants are expected. Lars-Otto Reiersen stated that SAON needs an outreach platform, but there is no need for two series of meetings. The Board repeated that AOS is a SAON Task, but that better coordination with the Board must be established. The proposal to establish the International Network of Arctic Observing Systems (INAOS) was not endorsed.
· WMO Rolling Review of Requirements (RRR, Task N3): There had been no reply to the invitation to join the work. SAON had also been in invited to nominate a representative of the WMO Commission of Basic Systems (CBS) Inter-Programme Expert Team on Observing Systems Design and Evolution (IPET-OSDE) to bring a perspective of Arctic countries into the WMO effort in integrating global observing systems. David Hik proposed that SAON accepts this invitation, noting that when a global organization approaches SAON, then we should grab this. The SAON Secretary could attend IPET-OSDE, and if a working group structure is developed the member could be drawn from this pool.
Following the Task presentations, there was an overall discussion on how to define a Task. Inga May noted that GTNP is now a program, and she asked how do we wrap up a task when ‘mission is accomplished’. She wanted to know how to establish a new task. GTNP had discussed, if it had helped at all to have ‘the SAON badge’. It was concluded that SAON had given a good start. Inga May noted that the funding will last four years and saw the need for a discussion on how to turn Tasks into programs and back. Volker Rachold (IASC) suggested a definition where SAON networks are continuous, while the Tasks are temporary. Alternatively, Martin Jeffries suggested a scenario, where a Task was accomplished successful, and is now a program. Hugues Lantuit noted that this goes back to a standard definition, which must define a threshold. Miroslav Ondras noted that it could be a task in itself how to integrate the networks. Such an activity should look for interconnections in terms of data management and standards. Simon Wilson argued that an aspect of a Task should be how to sustain data storage/data centers. Halldor Johansson (Iceland) wanted Tasks to be defined as layers. A question had been discussed at a recent meeting by the Arctic parliamentarians: “How to color code the Arctic” Halldor Johansson noted that permafrost is now a layer. Mark Parsons added that the definition of layers also must contain a definition about how to integrate layers. It was also noted that networks and programs like INTERACT and CBMP are defined as SAON Tasks, which is confusing. The meeting concluded that the next Board meeting should clarify these terms.